The philosophical implications of research on the social representations of human rights

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show how human rights can be the object of another politics than the one Marcel Gauchet denounces as an “egalitarian ethnocentrism” and regards as grounding a “democratic counter-productivity”. Drawing upon the research developed by Willem Doise and his colleagues, we show that human rights, when they become social representations, rather than generating a society of undifferentiated individuals, allow the individual and collective differences to position themselves around a common stake. In this sense, the construction of shared social representations is an essential condition for the democratization process in our societies. We show how the use of human rights in the context of the French quarrel over the Muslim hijab has contributed to a gradual transformation of human rights into practical and representational matrices for the development of a truly democratic debate. Finally, the article addresses the need to reflect upon the conditions allowing the establishment of these social representations.